In the International Labour Organization’s flagship report, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2024, the executive summary notes: “The macroeconomic environment deteriorated significantly over 2023 . . . [and] real wages declined in the majority of G20 countries as wage increases failed to keep pace with inflation.”
At the same time, “concerns about labor and skills shortages remain high” as sectors with essential workers such as manufacturing, construction, and ICT (information and communications technology) increasingly struggle to fill job vacancies.
How do we prepare students to enter a workforce where 75% of employers report difficulty filling roles due to skills shortages?
The first post in this blog series asked the question, “What does it mean to be ready for life?” The next question is, “What skills and competencies do students need to find postgraduate success?”
How High Schoolers Are Thinking about Their Futures
A shockingly small 8% of high schoolers surveyed reported feeling fully prepared to make postgraduate plans. That means that the college, career, and life readiness programming schools and districts are currently offering leaves 92% of their graduates underprepared for a labor market in flux, potentially negatively impacting their employability, their continued education, and their career growth.
Students are also growing disenchanted with school as they realize the wide gap between the content of the curriculum they learn in the classroom and the actual knowledge and skills that are useful in the workforce. Harvard’s “Inspiring Minds: Why Your Students Are Disengaged” notes, “Students are increasingly finding educational value from other resources and questioning the gap between what is taught in classrooms and what they need to learn to excel in the real world. Rather than extensive reading assignments and large cumulative tests, [schools] should consider integrating timely current events or discussions into their material.”
As a result, students feel less excitement about formal learning, with just 13% giving their school an “A” for that metric. On average, students rate their school a C+ on how well they are exposed to different career opportunities. Students are increasingly disenchanted about other school factors, as well: mental health support, personalized learning, and career education receive the lowest average grades.
How to Engage Students
Students who are engaged in school and their learning are 2.5 times more likely to say that they get excellent grades and do well in school, and 4.5 times more likely to be hopeful about the future than their actively disengaged peers.
One of the best ways to engage students is to deliver instruction on content that is relevant and relatable. Research indicates that a culturally relevant education can boost academic performance, participation, and critical thinking skills, as well as lead to higher graduation rates.
Engagement can also come in the form of work-based learning (WBL) and project-based learning (PBL). At a time when many states are embarking on initiatives that ask students to commit to career paths earlier in their high school careers, students can feel confined by the choices they’ve made. Opportunities for WBL and PBL help broaden students’ understanding of the many paths available to them and invite them to connect school skills to real-world situations.
For many educators, creating these opportunities may feel like adding yet another responsibility to an already-overwhelmed workload. Fortunately, PowerSchool’s Naviance CCLR has tools to help.
Naviance CCLR Compiles Skills, Competencies, and Experiences to Understand the Whole Child
Naviance CCLR’s self-discovery assessments are one of students’ favorite features of the platform. With AchieveWorks skills assessments, students learn about their interests, intelligences, learning style, personality, and strengths.
Once they have a better understanding of themselves, they can see how their abilities align with careers through Career Key and the Gallups Strengths Explorer.
With these assessments, students can easily view their results and be directly guided to careers and pathways that are a best fit and match. This helps increase exposure when it comes to career exploration based on self-discovery. Additionally, students can take these assessments repeatedly as they move through middle and high school, enabling them to see how their interests and strengths evolve as they mature.
A New Naviance CCLR Tool: Portfolio Showcases the Whole Child
Today’s students are engaging in more extracurricular activities than they did two decades ago. When it comes time to sit down and write their college applications and resumes, they may forget the many things they’ve done because they haven’t had a system to store a record of their experiences. A new tool in Naviance CCLR called Portfolio (arriving late summer 2024) empowers students to build a holistic view of their accomplishments. From academic highlights to extracurriculars, achievements, self-discovery results, and more – Portfolio captures it all.
Portfolio is more than just a collection of experiences; it’s a strategic tool. Items added to Portfolio can be mapped to careers through “competencies,” providing students with a clear understanding of how their experiences may relate to future employment. Competencies include career-aligned skills and knowledge sets, and with the use of AI, Naviance CCLR can make intelligent suggestions to students to help them see the big picture of their abilities.
Portfolio isn’t just about tracking; it’s about showcasing. With built-in guidance, students can easily share a curated version of their portfolio that goes beyond the limitations of an academic transcript. They learn how to present their experiences to their advantage, which also helps them build skills around creating a resume.
What Naviance CCLR Users Are Saying
We think Naviance CCLR is an amazing tool for postsecondary planning and career exploration, but you don’t have to take our word for it! Here’s what current Naviance CCLR clients are saying about the software:
Naviance CCLR is an instant doorway to connect with students. It’s engaging because it’s personalized for each student. It helps them see, here’s what you’re good at, here’s what you can be.
Jennifer Batchelor Program Specialist, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education
Pasco County (FL)
Pasco County, FL
Naviance CCLR told me what my strengths are and what careers I could get and the salaries. It said I can [be] an advertising manager. It says I have to spend four years in college and it tells me a lot about my strengths. That I’m artistic, I’m social, and it tells me what jobs are good for those strengths.
Roman Brophy Student
Pasco County School District
What I really enjoy about Naviance CCLR is you have a lot of options. You have a lot of tools. As a counselor, that’s what you want to give your students. You want to give them options. You want your students to know that there are possibilities for them, and that there are opportunities.
September Bullock Counselor
Fontana Unified School District (CA)
The Vision of Naviance CCLR
The addition of Portfolio to Naviance CCLR adds to our purpose: making career-aligned competencies part of everything students do, so they can easily connect what they learn in the classroom to what they want to do after they graduate.
As part of PowerSchool’s portfolio, Naviance CCLR can build a picture of the whole child with AI-supported skills mapping. Students can more easily see how the academic work they’re doing aligns with their future aspirations. By mapping to competencies and not just careers, Naviance CCLR helps students be more agile in their planning and in an evolving labor market. In the Naviance CCLR platform, pathway planning isn’t fixed; it moves flexibly with students as they learn more about themselves, their skills, and their interests.
Nobody can predict what the workforce will look like in the next three, five, or 10 years. By preparing students with competencies, transferable skills, and a comprehensive understanding of themselves and their strengths, Naviance CCLR helps develop individuals who are resilient, curious, and adaptable.
The College, Career, and Life Readiness Cloud
As students prepare to enter a rapidly evolving global job market, empower them with the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to excel in their educational journey and beyond.
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